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Arts Awards

What are Arts Awards?

Arts Awards support the creation of new artistic work that critically engages artists and audiences with biomedical science. We strive to work with all art forms and the diverse community we support includes artists, scientists, curators, writers, academics, producers, directors and education officers.

We believe that artists have a distinct approach to understanding and communicating ideas that can illuminate and challenge perceptions within society. We are convinced therefore that the arts have an invaluable role to play in engaging the public with biomedical science.

Arts Awards encourage creative collaborations between art and science. The Wellcome Trust believes that this exchange generates powerful, personal and visceral art and inspires interdisciplinary research and practice that brings benefits to artists and scientists alike.

You can apply for funding at two levels:

Small Arts Awards (small- to medium-sized projects - up to and including £40 000)
Small Arts Awards can support the R&D of new project ideas or ways of working, investigate and experiment with new methods of engagement through the arts, or fund or part-fund final production costs.

Large Arts Awards (larger projects - above £40 000)
Large Arts Awards can support full or part production costs for high-quality, large arts projects that aim to have significant reach or impact on audiences.

Large awards are primarily for applicants with a track record with the Wellcome Trust or Wellcome Collection; however, special cases can be made for teams with an excellent track record and a strong project idea where the initial research and development has already taken place.

Points to consider
Both the Large and Small Arts Award schemes are highly competitive and we are often even unable to fund very good applications.

Developing artistic practice:
High quality, imaginative artistic practice is a key feature of all successful Arts Award applications. We support professional, artist-led approaches to the subject matter that are likely to result in exciting and engaging work and the development of artistic practice.

Applicants often forget to write about the artistic vision, ambition or process behind their proposal, which makes it difficult for the funding Committee to understand or get excited about the activity they are being asked to support.

Projects that don’t lead to the development or delivery of new artistic work are usually ineligible for funding.

Creating new work:
The creation of ‘new work’ can include R&D towards future projects, or the final stages of making and delivering a project in development.

If you are applying for R&D funding, you should try and show us that you have both the capacity and experience to realise the finished piece in future.

For applications requesting funding towards final production costs, your application is more likely to be competitive if you are able to demonstrate a clear delivery or distribution plan. If this involves working with other partners or venues, indications of their support are valuable.

Involving biomedical science:
Arts Awards projects must have biomedical science input into the creative process. These collaborators may be from an ethics, science or history background, but must be experts in the area of biomedical science you are investigating. The most successful and rewarding projects develop responsive, collaborative relationships, with ongoing engagement.

In making decisions, we look for evidence that you have considered what form the collaboration with biomedical experts is likely to take, and that this is appropriate for your project and partners. Due to the competitive nature of the awards, applications that don’t include a confirmed biomedical expert will usually be ineligible for funding.

Reaching audiences:
The strongest applications are able to articulate why a project is likely to be of interest to its audience and how that audience is likely to be targeted.

The Trust is increasingly interested in supporting projects that reach audiences currently underserved by existing arts and science engagement activity.

Application guidelines and further information on preparing your application are included in the “How to apply” section.

Other sources of funding
Projects that have strong science content, but no creative collaboration, may be more suited to a People Award.

Film projects that are not experimental art films and/or are mass broadcast media projects may be better suited to the Co-production Awards or the Development Awards for development costs. Please contact the scheme advisers if you need further information or advice.

Projects that are not eligible for Arts Award support include health promotion, education or campaign projects, arts projects for therapeutic purposes, factual documentaries, work that is purely illustrative and projects dealing with non-biomedical sciences. The scheme does not normally support the costs of fiction writing unless there is clear evidence of interdisciplinary collaboration with appropriate biomedical input and a strong public engagement/dissemination plan.

How do I apply?

Both the Large and Small Arts Award schemes are highly competitive and we are often even unable to fund very good applications. You are advised to read the following documents before applying:

As of July 2014 applications for our Small Arts and People Awards will no longer be peer reviewed ahead of Committee meetings. This change aims to enable faster funding decisions and to relieve the burden of peer review from public engagement professionals and researchers.

The Trust will continue to provide written feedback from funding Committees for all eligible applications submitted to the schemes.

To be eligible for an Arts Award, you and your activity must primarily be based in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. Applicants are usually affiliated to organisations, but you can apply as an individual for a Small Arts Award.

The Arts Awards team are happy to answer questions and discuss the suitability of projects ahead of an application. As we have limited capacity for these conversations please contact us well in advance of your application deadline. Contact details are available on the Deadlines and Contacts tab. We are unable to offer feedback on draft applications.

Eligibility overview:

The project must develop new artistic work

The confirmed team must include a professional artist and an expert in biomedical science, ethics, medical humanities or medical history relevant to the project’s themes

The project activity takes place in the UK and/or Republic of Ireland

The funding requested does not exceed £40,000 (Small Arts) or £150,000 (Large Arts).

Small Arts Awards (up to and including £40 000)
You will need to complete a full application form, via the Trust's
eGrants online application system (select the 'Small Arts Awards' form in the 'Full application' drop-down menu), and submit it at any time before the published deadline. A sample application form can be downloaded from
eGrants.

Please note that if you are applying to carry out your project as part of an organisation, you will need to contact the Wellcome Trust to register the organisation on eGrants before an application can be submitted. Please allow extra time for this process.

You can find out whether your organisation is already registered
here, or download instructions to register a new organisation
here.

Large Arts Awards (between £40 000 and £150 000)
The Large Arts Awards are primarily for applicants with a track record with the Wellcome Trust or Wellcome Collection. Special cases can be made for teams that can provide evidence of an excellent track record and a particularly strong project idea, where the initial research and development of the project has already taken place.

If you are successful at this stage, you will be invited to submit an application form, which will be peer reviewed and assessed by a committee. If your application is shortlisted, you will be invited for interview where you will be asked to present your project and answer questions.

What projects have been funded?

Arts Awards support imaginative and experimental arts projects that explore biomedical science. These are some recent highlights.

For the best, Mark Storer & Anna Ledgard
Funded in 2010
Inspired by and created with adults and children attending hospitals in London and Liverpool, For the Best was a site specific performance and an imaginative, creative exploration of a family's experience of living with renal disease.

The aesthetic, rhythm and sound of the piece was inspired by the honesty and bravery of the children, the adults and their families that the team met in developing the work.

We especially liked this work because it brought the patient’s experience of biomedical science to the forefront in a sensitive way, resulting in an innovative and moving performance. Over a long period of engagement, Mark Storor’s creative process broke down barriers between patients and staff, with the clinicians involved saying their understanding, empathy and communication with patients and improved as a result.

The team’s dedication to the participants and process also led a comprehensive evaluation report, one of the best we’ve seen. You can download it
here.

Tales from Babel, The Clerks
Funded in 2011
www.talesfrombabel.co.uk/
Building upon The Clerks’ previous work, Edward Wickham and Christopher Fox created a score for the six voices of The Clerks that explored the neuroscientific, psychological, and linguistic challenges of hearing words in a complex auditory environment (the so-called ‘cocktail party problem’) in an entertaining and innovative way.

Alongside performances of the work in Cambridge, Middlesex and Huddersfield, each presentation included listening tests for the audience, which have provided a unique opportunity for scientific collaborators Dr Antje Heinrich and Professor Sarah Hawkins to study data from large cohorts of participants in a live performance environment.

Generating research outcomes alongside an exciting piece of new music makes this an especially interesting project for us. While arts awards aren’t expected to generate research outcomes (and for many it’s simply not appropriate) The Clerk’s experience shows a genuine collaboration between scientists and artists running at the heart of the creative process.

Going Dark, Sound & Fury
Funded in 2011
www.fueltheatre.com/projects/going-dark
Going Dark is an immersive performance about a man losing his sight due to an eye disease. Using the company’s innovative theatre vocabulary of surround sound design, moments of total darkness and imaginative lighting and projections, Going Dark explores perception and vision, through the story of man dealing with the consequences of the onset of blindness.

Over the last three years, Going Dark has continued to tour across the UK.

We’re always delighted to see collaborations between artists and scientists extend beyond simply fact-checking or providing information. Sound & Fury’s collaboration with biomedical scientists influenced and strengthened the narrative of the performance from an early stage, providing part of the structure and character inspiration at the heart of the piece. This has provided critical engagement with biomedical science within a very human story. The Trust’s funding also enabled the company to develop and refine its artistic practice, furthering future innovation within their work.

Deadlines and contacts

Small Arts Awards (up to and including £40 000)
During 2015 we are launching a
new grants system that will replace
eGrants, our former electronic application system. It is important that your application is submitted using the appropriate system.

If you plan to submit an application for a Small Arts Award to 7 August 2015 deadline, please complete and submit an application form via the Trust's eGrants online application system. If you intend to submit an application to a later deadline, you should wait until our new system is launched from May 2015 – we will update this webpage to let you know when the application forms are available.

Upcoming deadlines are:

7 August 2015 (17:00)

27 November 2015 (17:00)

Funding decisions will be made approximately 10 weeks after the relevant deadline and we will tell you the result shortly afterwards.

Large Arts Awards (between £40 000 and £150 000)
There is one deadline a year for Large Arts – please check the website again shortly for the 2016 deadline.

Successful applicants who submitted an application to the annual deadline on 23 January 2015 will be asked to submit a full application by 24 April 2015 and if this is successful they will be invited to interview in July. A final funding decision will be made by the end of July 2015.

Please contact us if you wish to discuss these arrangements in more detail.

Contacts
The Arts Awards team are happy to answer questions and discuss the suitability of projects for the fund ahead of making an application. Please note we can’t offer feedback on application drafts.